When I first got introduced to CactusVPN I signed up for a 24 hour trial which is the same as a full account but has the time limit. This is a good way to prove to your clients how good your service is and to the potential buyer of the service a great way to see if the service is right for you.

CactusVPN comes with it’s own installer which installed without hassle for me on W7x64, when installing I ticked the Autostart box (which is unticked as default) as I want VPN to start with Windows.

Once installed the GUI has 4 Tabs :
Connection :This has the option of 3 Countries and 6 Servers, 2 per country . Coutries are UK, US and Netherlands . You also have the choice of protocols for that Server PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN . In the city box you have access to a second server if this is chosen then VPN Protocol changes to PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN is replaced with SSTP

What Protocol is best for me ? Here are some tips on how to choose VPN protocol Choosing VPN Protocol
For the purpose of this Review I will be using OpenVPN protocol .
Is P2P supported ? Yes – only on the NL Servers.

Settings : The second TAB provides options for your Startup and options for reconnection should the server ‘drop out’ for any reason

Apps Killer : This is where you can add your installed Browsers and installed other programs. If the Servers connections drop then the apps you have added in here will immediately terminate.

Note: To add a Portable version of an application such as Firefox Portable you need to add both the ‘wrapper’ (FirefoxPortable.exe) and firefox.exe from its folder . You can see this in TaskManager Process when you run the portable version. Right click in Task Manager both files then ‘Open File Location’ this will give you the exe paths to add to AppsKiller.

Info : This TAB provides direct links to all the information you would need regarding your Cactus VPN provider.

In trying out the VPN service :
The first thing I did after connecting using the NL server and OpenVPN protocol is run a DNSLeak test .

I have no holes in my bucket ! My privacy is protected (Hide IP) without me having to manually configure my set up .The 5 servers that it shows are neither my ISP’s server nor does it show my ISP’s IP .
This is important as a DNS Leak means your ISP can see where you going on the internet and means your VPN provider is not providing privacy .

Utorrent :

(IP of seeds masked out as courtesy – torrent is DriverPacks taken from their site)

I did a torrent download check. I was surprised that I could download at 80% of my ISPs speed for a good 90% plus of the download. I downloaded the whole 3.13Gb (in fact I did it twice to confirm) . The speed can vary due to seeders, this torrent is always well seeded and uTorrent isn’t a great method of a speed check, but I have never got 80% out of a VPN. (NOTE: don’t use the UK or US server with torrents only the NL)

Speedtests My ISP Maximum speed is 10Mb down and 1Mb up (on a good day with the wind behind me 😉 )

Above left NL server , above right UK server and below US Server

Below is an animated .gif showing the three countries whilst using another speedtest

Note speedtests can vary depending on a good number of factors .

Conclusion:
I was very impressed with CactusVPN . They didn’t DNSLeak , they stopped my programs dead rather than expose my privacy and all this was done without any complex further configuration.
‘Out-of-the-box protection’ is a must. Speeds were great over the last few days ,I have been connected to their servers constantly. The fact they hugely competitive price wise, as can be seen by their VPN Prices and there response time to my support ticket (under 5 minutes) puts them above most VPN providers.
Potential improvements :
A few more servers would make for more selection.